This week we mark 15 Av, a day that celebrates Jewish matchmaking and marriage. We combed Jewish sources texts for these 7 inspirational aphorisms from the Torah about Jewish marriage and relationships.
1. Adam and Eve: The Original Power Couple
G‑d said, “It is not good for man to be alone.”
It was after these words that He created Eve, thus completing the world’s first power couple.
2. You win or lose
A good relationship is not only the secret sauce behind a life of peace, tranquility and joy but also the key to drawing down a unique blessing from the Creator. Rabbi Akiva said as much (Sotah 17b), keying off of the Hebrew words for husband (איש) and wife (אשה), which combine to form the words, “fire” (אש) and “G‑d” (י-ה).
“Husband and wife, if they are meritorious, the divine presence (Shechinah) dwells among them. If they are not, a fire consumes them.”
3. What a bargain!
In the Ketubah, the marriage contract between husband and wife, many people have the custom of including the verse (Proverbs 18:22), “He who finds a wife has found good, and earns the favor of G‑d.”
A good marriage is the vessel for bringing G‑d’s blessings into our lives.
4. Meet my better half
The Zohar (I 91a) teaches us that marriage isn’t just a guy and a girl brought together by happenstance, but rather “a husband and wife are one soul, separated only through their descent to this world. When they are married, they are reunited again.”
5. Increase the peace!
So important is the peace between a husband and wife, that Jewish law states it can even override some other mitzvahs.
For example, the Talmud teaches (Shabbat 23b) that if a person is strapped for cash and must choose between buying “a Chanukah candle or a Shabbat candle [that provides light and tranquility in the house], the Shabbat candle is more important because of the imperative of peace in the home [shalom bayit].”
6. … At all costs!
We find this importance on peace between the husband and wife not only relative to the candles in the house, but even in regards to the very sanctity of G‑d’s name!
In the Sotah ceremony—a ritual performed in order to bring peace between a feuding husband and wife—the very name of G‑d is erased and ground into water that the wife drinks as part of the ceremony.
As the Talmud (Derech Eretz Zuta 11) writes: Great is peace, that we find the Holy One, blessed be He will waive the holiness of His name—that it be written in holiness and then erased in water—in order to bring peace between husband and wife.
7. “If you will it, success will follow”
This is what the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of saintly memory, wrote to a chassid who had complained about troubles at home (Igrot Kodesh Vol 10, pp 221):
“It is incumbent upon you and your wife to each do what is dependent on them to bring their hearts together and strengthen peace in the home. And if they truly desire this, then surely they will succeed!”
Join the Discussion